The secret council officer: stand up for social media at your peril

Overly cautious social media policies do more harm than good for local government and change is too slow

Are you free to tweet? Local government social media policies can be regressive and damaging, warns The Secret Council Officer. Photograph: Peter Svoboda / Rex Features Peter Svoboda / Rex Features/Peter Svoboda / Rex Features

When it comes to communications, local government knows how to talk the talk. It invests staff time and residents' money in producing glossy brochures and visions for the future, calling on local people to get involved and share their ideas with the council. But when it comes to social media – an essential communication tool, and the medium of choice for so many younger people – local government is still in the dark ages.

In my experience, many of those making the decisions about social media have never used it. They have stereotypically negative views about online debate, focusing on the perceived dangers and obscuring the benefits.

Today many of us carry the internet in our jacket pocket. We expect to be able to contact friends, send a text, or passively scan Facebook or Twitter updates or post our own – actions which take only fractions of seconds but can have a huge impact. It is frustrating and depressing to see these new opportunities to interact with residents on their terms hampered or barred by repressive, defensive and retentive social media policies drawn up by those who do not see the damage their cautious approach causes.

Social media is not just an online "hangout". It is a way of life for a generation, yet its use in local government is so often controlled by those who underestimate its power.

On Facebook, you won't find any benefit unless you engage with your "friends". On Twitter, you won't reach new followers unless they can interact with you, and that involves posting messages and sending responses to questions in real time. Tweeters don't routinely bother to search out profile pages – you are what you say, as you say it. Council websites are still the location residents expect to go for news about services, waste collection and opening times. But if they try to reach you on Twitter or Facebook it is because they want to communicate with you now.

I am not a young upstart or internet techie, but it breaks my heart to see local government believing that it is engaging with social media while describing its approach to new media as "cautious". This type of presence without engagement is far more damaging to a local authority's reputation than no presence at all.

Here's a helpful analogy: if you put a £250k house on the market at £500k, with the intention of reducing it by £5k a week until someone is interested enough to make an offer, you lose all impact and potential buyers quickly see that you are a waste of their time. That is the negative impact of a price reduction policy. On the other hand, if you go to the market at the right price from the start, serious punters will be quick to view and the deal will close near to the asking price.

Cautious and repressive social media policies have, in my view, the same negative impact, which is difficult – if not impossible – to remedy later on. Instead, councils should launch Facebook and Twitter with full functionality; be open, be expressive and engage with our customers in real time in this media of their choice.

Council officers are already trusted not to go off message with residents on the telephone, by email and in person. We should offer that same trust and freedom when it comes to corporate Twitter accounts, following the same employment terms and conditions.

What are managers so afraid will happen? Criticism, complaint, abuse or defamation in a public forum? It's better to openly show how well you handle these issues if they arise, and the more ambitious authorities are already finding that the compliments and thanks received, naturally counter any negative feeling.

For local government to use social media effectively, officers at all levels need to have their own personal experience of using it as part of their job. They should embrace the challenge to be able to explain their role using just 140 characters.

But be the council officer who dares speak up for social media at your peril. I have encountered a surprising level of suspicion and even open hostility for arguing the case for social media at my authority.

This week's secret council officer works for a local authority in the south of England